Doth One Book Make a Store?
Everywhere you look in the recently opened Ed’s Martian Book in New York City’s West Village you’ll see the same book.
Whether you’re in the New and Noteworthy section or the Sale section you will be exposed to one book and one book only, Kessler’s recently released, Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days With the Phoenix Mars Mission, an account of his time spend inside NASA’s mission control.
3000 or so copies of the book make up the entire inventory of the book shop.
“The store is part marketing ploy, to be sure (Mr. Kessler is a creative director at an advertising agency), but also part meditation on the meaning of the book in an age of e-readers and a bankrupt Borders” writes Elissa Gootman in her New York Times piece, A Book Store. That’s Right. Book, Singular.
Kessler, who was able to pull off this book feat with the help of the landlord, expects to pack up the shop in mid-May. There is no word on where he will land afterward.